Istari's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Reign ep 5-2]

Well...

Since you obviously put quite a bit of effort into this, I'll review it seriously instead of sprouting a 3-syllable insult and running off.

You need to stop motion tweening fights. Period. It might seem a lot easier than frame by framing, but it ends up looking like crap. Worry about getting basic motions right before doing Ki blasts or stuff like that. Frame by frame a walk loop. It sounds easy, but it's hard as hell to do right and will teach you a lot about animation even if it doesnt come out right.

Oh ya, go to Shockanime.com and see Genryu's Blade, then watch the fight scenes one frame at a time. And then read the Behind the Scenes section. It has pretty much all the principals you need to do what you're trying to do in this one.

See the movie "Yukino" in my profile for a more basic(ie: crappier) example.

PS: at the beginning I thought grape clock and another clock member was colliding. Work on your special effects....

TESM responds:

Thank you for an honest review, and this is tweened, but good right?
I'm working real hard on the next one and it will kick ass, I'm still relativly new at
this, but still very good for 14 eh?
Anyway, the special effects are getting better....
Thanks
was the sound style and graphics that bad?

[Paper Aflutter]

Masterful

The frame by frame of the paper folding into the crane was, hands down, the most skillful use of shadows I've seen in a Flash Movie. Did the origami book you were looking at have the gradients, or did you create them out of thin air?

Detesticus responds:

I actually used an Origami book for resources, and reproduced what I saw.

[Arrogancy: Chapter 3 (SV)]

Nice!

Very pretty animation! However, I have the same problem with this as I did with Vampire Hunter Ina: most of the "action" scenes aren't framed by framed, but just tweened symbols followed by a white screen to indicate a hit, then more tweened symbols showing the results of that hit. Ever since seeing Genryu's Blade, where each slash, each kick, involved 8-9 different frames with 30-40 painstackingly placed symbols representing different body parts see from different perspectives, I just couldn't give stuff like yours a 10 anymore.
The sound was a bit lackluster, too, but hey, you made it yourself!

arrogancy responds:

Please don't compare my animation to Vampire Hunter Ina. It took me too long to painstakenly draw and time those frames to compare it to a movie without ANY frame-by frame. Not to mention that the real version has voice acting, which also took frame by frame, and I did my own music instead of using some top - 50 rock song. :)

All of my punches/kicks contained AT LEAST 3-4 frames of animation from the person doing it. That's what jumps the file size up, after all.

It's incomparable to Genyu's Blade because, being a one-shot, he had enough time to do whatever he pleased. Having a series in which you have to constantly worry about file size and the timing of episodes doesn't allow you to do that. And his chracters were slightly less complex than mine, allowing him more room in his frame by frame.

[Destroyer Clocks]

Lol!

I can't believe someone made a parody of my animation! Hahahahahhaha!! This is the best compliment that anyone on NG has paid me!

And to traekwon_ : of course I can't kill the clocks. They're flash symbols, silly!

BurritoClock responds:

It is, it's all in good fun. I wish more people could comprehend that! It's just flash people! heh heh

[Vampire Hunter INA]

The graphics are there, but......

First of all, I'd like to commend you on a very nicely put together animation. The gore and nudity for the sake of gore and nudity put me off quite a bit, but hey, that's what the average NGer wants, and who are you(or I) to complain?

However, I just couldn't find it in myself to care about the main character. She shows up, chops up vampire, looks really good, and then leaves. The animation is no more than a gore fest without too much attention to atmosphere or character developement.

And the superb grahics simply weren't superb enough to cover that up, as it did in, say, Genryu's Blade. By comparison, your movements werent as smooth, the character designs weren't as pretty, and the backgrounds didn't look as cool... I guess I was simply spoiled by studying GB and Ninjai frame-by-frame to learn their animation techniques.

ImageNation responds:

Thanks for the review and we can understand how you couldn't grow attached to her. this was after all just an attempt to introduce her. Also the animation had to have limits to it not place on by us but by flash and the net in general. we decided to cut down the animation in order to fit more in the cartoon is after all over 6 minutes. Any how thanks for the review.

[Linkin Park - Crawling]

Someone stole your work!

Someone uploaded your "In the end" music video a coupla days ago, I recognized your style immediately, and since you got the site, u must be the real one =). The other guy is Brandon Blackburn, you can find him by running a search on "In the end". Unless he did it with your permission, you should email Tom and get his ass banned.

Oh, and your work kicks ass. I might even start listening to them now!

funnydoodle responds:

thanx for ur support ! but i'm still new here.... perhaps someone could notify the ppl in charge about his atitude... then i'll be really appreciative! thanx!

[Evolution (MovieTrailer)]

Let me get this right...

You have the thing all planned out, yet you haven't started yet, and you want to ask us, the Newgrounds community, for ideas? And expect us to respond with something useful?? While telling us nothing whatsoever about your movie(other than it involves evolution and will contain "good graphics")?? Hah!!! I'll bet you get nothing outta this. In fact, I doubt you'll get more than 5 or 6 reviews.

PS For god's sake STREAM THE AUDIO!!!

LucidDREAMS responds:

Ok, thanks for the review first of all, all I'm asking the community is what they like to see in movies, this means that they get the most from the cartoon. I have already started on the animation and as you can see from "ed-3000's" review, all I'm asking for is suggestions, he says that the hero should be a woman, well now we're started, Loki is going to be the main character no matter what, but because Ed wants a woman, a few more people may, so I will now add parts into my story involving the addition of a woman. This is all I am going to tell you for now, because even with a community working on a project in small doses, I still want people to get the element of surprise when this is finished. Its a new and original Idea, without experiment you have nothing.

[Flash Tournament: Fight 1]

that's a great idea!

When pikachu came on stage with the Pokemon music blaring I laughed out loud. However, the graphics really weren't that great. Since the characters didn't move that much, you could have easily traced them outta stills of the show.
Go online, download some pictures, import em into flash, convert to symbol, go to window->panel->effect->alpha, lower it to about 50% or so, and then put another layer over it and trace the pictures with the pencil tool. Easy as can be.
And one more thing, STREAM THE AUDIO!!! Something like this shoulda been 500, 600k, tops.

the-adversary responds:

I know the graphics arent that good, but i dont think i should trace, because in the next fight vegitas in hell move around a lot more, and i wanted to keep it in my style.

[star fighters elite]

Not bad at all

The thing that would get you the biggest improvement in score for the least effort at this point is learning to make a preloader. Graphics and style takes time to improve, not much u could do about that, but not having a preloader cost u, cuz the movie streamed and the latter half ran slow as hell.

DINOCLAW responds:

thanks for all your reviw and i will try to make a preloader and improve on some falts so think of this as a "first" cut but all your reviws help.